JasonKoivu

Prepare to witness people getting trampled, if you're going to read Running With The Bulls, the true story, in her own words, of a foster child who by chance ends up a close confidant to Ernest Hemingway in the last years of his life.

Most know by now of the terribly troubled end to Hemingway's otherwise seemingly carefree and lively life (although it should be noted that he surrounded himself with people and made them stay up all night drinking and partying because he had insomnia due to a sort of fear of those lonely, dark hours of the night, an early precursor to his later mental issues), and it was this party atmosphere that Valerie got roped into under the loose pretense of being his personal secretary.

For a girl who'd lived an orphan's life, growing up in foster houses and convents, and who wished to cultivate a writer's career, it would seem a pretty lucky stroke for her to end up in the position she did, and therefore it becomes difficult to listen to her whinge about it. Indeed, there is a great deal of the "woe is me, but aren't I the put upon one" going on as Valeria plays the reluctant hero or passively accepting martyr, if you will, in the course of her being sucked up into the Hemingway circus. One feels as if this perhaps is partly for show.

With most all of the principle players dead at the time of the book being published, it's a bit of a one-sided story. We have to take Valerie's word at face value and hope for the sake of justice to all she slanders, that she actually is speaking the truth. Ernest, his wife Mary and their son Greg come in for the most criticism. Greg receives the attention of half the book and duly so since Valerie married him. It was not an altogether pleasant marriage as Greg turned out to be a transexual with deep-rooted psychological issues.

But all is not doom and gloom or venom from a scorned viper. There is praise and pity for all, as well as great insight to "Papa," really the only reason anyone would likely read Running with the Bulls. And it is apparent that Valerie took something quite positive from her time running with the most important of Hemingways: Directness. You see, Ernest Hemingway wrote in the compact style of the journalist. After all, that was his occupation at the start of his writing career, so why wouldn't that style carry over to his fictional work? It did, and now there's a huge contingent of Hemingway-haters who don't think he could actually write because he used simple language. I was one of those people at one time, I must admit. But what I didn't see was his intentional attempts at directness. He purposefully meant to get at the point in the most direct way possible so that there would be no ambivalence to his meaning. Valerie's writing has an admirable directness. You may not agree, you may not like what you hear, but you must admit she does not mince words.